


Bloom

by sylpher



Series: galaxies and gardens [2]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Angst, Chosen Soulmates, Flower metaphors, Flowers, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Romance, Sci-fi/Fantasy AU, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Universe AU, here it is, i have the comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26965393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylpher/pseuds/sylpher
Summary: In which star-children are fated for a sun and a moon.Jeongin finds Felix, and they fall in love as his garden grows.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Felix (Past), Lee Felix/Seo Changbin (Past), Lee Felix/Yang Jeongin | I.N
Series: galaxies and gardens [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966399
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	Bloom

**Author's Note:**

> The sequel~ 
> 
> As before; lightly edited, but mostly untouched. No extra warnings either, just good old-fashioned hurt/comfort - and a quote from Mulan, because I watched it very recently and was delighted by the relevance of this particular kernel of wisdom:
> 
> "The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all." 
> 
>   
> Thank you for reading! May we all find the strength and courage to blossom despite the circumstances xx

In the space beyond the stars, there is a place called the Alone.

It's neither big nor small, light nor dark, empty nor full. It's the in-between.

It's very, very cold.

And grey.

___________________

Tonight, the ice-lilies will bloom.

They'll mark the start of Jeongin's twenty-first star-cycle as keeper.

He's been keeper of the Alone for as long as he could hear starsong - which is a very long time indeed - but stars and smoke aren't the best of friends so Jeongin relies on the flowers he grows to tell him how the cycles change.

There's a skylight in the ceiling of a room with four walls and too many windows that sits at the top of Jeongin's garden. The walls are grey; as is the floor and the ceiling, but the moonflower Jeongin planted has made a home for itself clambering up towards the roof, which at least helps the outside.

The skylight doesn't look out into the Alone. When he's in his garden, Jeongin will sometimes shift his gaze upwards, out beyond the clear dome that stops the smoke and the ash, and the Alone is all he can see.

But when he looks up inside the grey room, star-space stares right back.

___________________

His skylight isn't in a system of any sort. Jeongin figured that out pretty quick. There's no day-cycles or night-cycles or _any_ sort of cycles to tether himself to. He's in a patch of empty space; an interstellar blank.

He can't find it in himself to be too upset.

There's too many colours for that.

___________________

When the comet daisies unfurl, Jeongin opens the gate. Faintly shimmering pastels wave goodbye as it swings gently shut behind him.

The last time Jeongin was outside his dahlias were still in bloom, and the Alone has become a little wild in his absence. The shadows press closer than usual, dark dripping onto his fingertips when he reaches out his hand to grasp a fallen star lying just off the path.

Its core pulses faintly; a deep, exhausted red.

When Jeongin brings it close to his chest and whispers _it's okay to let go_ , a soft sigh breathes through shadow and smoke. The next moment, a cluster of ruby-tinged stardust clings to his palms.

The cherry tree, Jeongin decides.

This one belongs to the sky.

___________________

When Jeongin first became keeper, he didn't expect it to be quite so much work. He wanted to do it, sure - didn't have much of a choice, to be fair - but had no idea exactly how much time he'd need to put into keeping the little green things in his garden all growing and blooming and _alive_.

Especially because it turned out that Jeongin is very, very talented at killing plants.

He doesn't know who he took over from, either; just that there were significantly more flowers when he first found himself at the gate of the Garden than there were two daisy-blooms later.

Not _now_ , obviously. He's had twenty-one star-cycles to get much better at keeping things alive.

Now, he can tell which stars want to go where, when his flowers are going to bloom; when the patterns of stardust need shifting for a new cycle. He listens to the echoes of starsong, watches as soft petals flutter quietly in a non-existent breeze, and wonders how they would grow outside the Alone.

It's long, hard work, but Jeongin loves it. It means that when he lies down in the moonflower-coated room at the top of his garden, looks up and out into star-space, it's no longer completely unknown. The distant galaxies aren't just blue and yellow and orange; they're _cornflower_ blue, and _daffodil_ yellow, and _marigold_ orange.

He wonders if they have other names for them out there; for the flowers he loves and tends to as they grow, and mourns for as they wither.

(But mostly he wonders if they've ever seen flowers at all.)

___________________

When the ice-lilies bloom, Jeongin remembers what it is to be lonely.

It's his only time for rest, for quiet, in the entirety of the star-cycle, but it feels more suffocating than the smoke that presses down on the dome above his head.

The stardust has stopped singing, there's no flowers left to bloom. It's just Jeongin, in the middle of his garden, silent.

He digs his hands into iridescence, feels it drift past his fingers as he slowly draws them back out.

He looks up, around, at the low walls of his garden and the clear dome, and the gate.

There's something out there, in the Alone, calling his name.

Outside the dome the smoke writhes; ash and shadow twining to lap against the worn edges of the path.

Jeongin gets up and walks out the gate.

The comet daisies shrivel behind him.

___________________

For all his twenty-one cycles, Jeongin has never felt so exposed in the Alone.

It's not just wild, now, it's _foreign_ , sits wrong against his skin. The shadows slip oil-slick beneath his feet, and it's with no small dose of fear that Jeongin realises he's completely lost.

There's too many stars scattered around him, young and bright and burning pale blue; not the tired ruby that sighs in the relief as they crumble to dust. They don't sing, these small stars, they _weep_ , a wretched lament for themselves and for all those still falling.

Nauseated, Jeongin can do nothing but stumble past them.

He doesn't know how he's still on the path. He can't see anything besides the dizzying pinpricks of light from the fallen stars, and those are dimming fast, choked in thick smoke.

Then, suddenly, everything stops.

The Alone is still shifting, shadows violent in all its vast empty spaces, but it pulls back from the path and lets Jeongin get his bearings. He doesn't have them for long, though.

Before him, on a stretch of path barely wide enough for Jeongin to stand on, lies a star-child.

___________________

Jeongin has heard of star-children before; from the stars that fall when they're orange, not red, and still have enough spark left to tell stories of star-space. He knows that they age by their hair, that they're fated for a sun and a moon by the constellations on their cheeks and the light that glows behind them.

But this star-child doesn't glow. His constellations aren't shining. And when Jeongin lifts him up, stumbling back a few steps at the feather-light weight of a too-small frame, he's colder than shadow.

His hair, silky and fine where it brushes against Jeongin's shoulder, is ash-grey.

___________________

Jeongin puts him under the cherry tree.

The star-child is tiny, dwarfed by the delicate trunk. It's back here, under the dome, that Jeongin finally sees how dim he is, too. The stars told him stories of people who shine from within, whose skin burns and flares like a miniature sun. But this one doesn't. Not even a little.

Jeongin wonders if that's why he's so cold.

Mostly, though, he wonders when he'll wake up.

___________________

Jeongin watches the star-child for one full daisy-bloom.

His eyes never open.

The branches of the cherry tree hang low, petals resting on his face and shoulders. They push his hair, the colour of smoke, out of his eyes to expose fragile features wrapped in pale, dulled skin. His constellations are dark, peppered uneven on his cheeks and across his nose, scattered up around his eyes almost to his forehead.

_They must have been beautiful_ , Jeongin thinks sadly, catching his own hand mid-stretch as his fingers reach out to brush over the minuscule splotches.

When he's tending to his orchids up by the moonflower room - still in sight of the too-still form of the star-child - he runs a fingertip along the vibrant pink speckled on soft purple petals and admits, cheeks inexplicably warm, _they still are_.

___________________

After another half daisy-bloom, Jeongin starts to actively consider the possibility the star-child won't ever wake up. He's pretty sure the thought shouldn't make him want to cry. But he also knows, somewhere in him, that it might be more of a mercy; for a star-child with dim constellations and no glow on his cheeks or his skin or in his hair, to fade like the stars do when they fall.

___________________

It's the butterfly daisies that tell him it's finally time to leave the garden. The comets are still withered, colour bleeding out into the stardust below, centres dulled and grey. Jeongin doesn't know how it's possible for colour to drip out of petals, but this _is_ the Alone, and he's no longer surprised when his flowers do strange things.

He leaves the star-child as he's been for the past two daisy-blooms; silent and still against the trunk of the cherry tree, eyes shut tight against the outside. _You're not in star-space anymore_ , Jeongin whispers to him as he shuts the gate.

_It's okay to wake up now_.

___________________

As he walks the shadow-paths of the Alone, Jeongin thinks.

He thinks about the star-child lying in his garden; about the dullness of his skin, the dark stars on his cheeks that lose a little of their depth with every passing bloom. He ponders, as he reaches out and steals a fallen star away from the smoke, what exactly could have happened for his shine to go out; for his core to run cold and his hair to fade to ash.

There's sapphire stardust in Jeongin's hands. It coats his fingers in iridescence, seeps into his skin. It's already started to sing.

He toys with the idea of going back to the garden, of taking one of the star-child's hands in both of his and giving _him_ the stardust, instead of the violets. He imagines what his skin would look like; already an alabaster pearl from lying at the base of the cherry tree, if the sapphire took and spread under his skin like it does in his flowers, drifting up through delicate petals.

But even as he imagines it Jeongin frowns, because sapphire doesn't sit right. The star-child isn't a cold, deep blue. His skin won't take to the jewel-tone like Jeongin's violets will.

The star-child is something warm, something bright; something entirely new that Jeongin has never seen in his stardust before.

Around him, the smoke and shadow of the Alone seems to shudder just a little. The dark dripping onto his fingertips pulls back slightly.

Jeongin, with a faint smile, wonders if maybe soon he'll find that warm, bright _something_.

___________________

It's a long way back to the gate. He finds more stars on the smoke-paths than the shadow-paths, and by the time he's back at his garden there's a headache pounding in his temple from the cacophony - with this much stardust, he can only hope it learns to harmonise before the irises bloom.

It quiets as he gives it to the flowers, thankfully. The violets take to the sapphire better than they have to anything Jeongin's tried to give them before, and the daffodils proudly claim the gold at their base. The poppies and peonies are almost in bloom, colour just beginning to peek out from behind tightly furled green. Jeongin brushes a little ruby stardust over the buds for good measure, something warming in his chest at the resulting gleam.

The comet daisies, though, are as grey as the star-child's hair.

Pastel pink lies in curious droplets at their base, quivering slightly when Jeongin pokes one with the tip of a finger. When he touches their petals, he almost expects them to crumble to ash in his palms, but they feels exactly as they did when they had colour, just colder.

He's trying to figure out which type of stardust they might take to when there's an abrupt shift in the smoke just above his head, outside the dome.

A cherry branch, heavy with blossoms, brushes at his cheek.

When Jeongin stands and makes his way up the path around the tree, he's met with a pair of frightened amber eyes, dark and hollow and haunted by shadows Jeongin has never seen before. He feels his own eyes widen in shock, opens his mouth to speak words that haven't formed yet-

Before he can, though, the star-child's eyes roll back and he keels sharply to the right, crumpling into pale stardust.

Once the cloud of iridescent powder settles, Jeongin runs a hand through his hair in distress.

That went well.

___________________

Jeongin moves the star-child.

He's a not-dead star-child, which is nice, but he's also a passed-out star-child, which is less so. He's also still worryingly light and horribly cold, but when Jeongin gives in and runs fingers over the dim constellations on his cheekbones, there's a faint pulse of warmth there that spreads up into his chest.

He puts the star-child in the moonflower room, facing the window that looks out into his garden. Probably not the best idea to let him wake up to a skylight of star-space, or a wall of shadow and smoke.

Then he finishes his flowers.

It's the cherry tree again that tells Jeongin when the star-child is awake. It drapes a branch over his shoulder and lets soft petals break him from the quiet contemplation he enters when he gardens.

The star-child is just opening his eyes again as Jeongin steps through the doorway, and it takes no more than a breath for the fear to return. It fades a little, though, when the star-child's gaze falls to rest on Jeongin's knees.

A burning flush of embarrassment seeps through every inch of Jeongin's being when he realises his knees and shins all the way down to his feet are completely coated in stardust. He crouches down quickly, to let the grey of the floor take the shine away.

The star-child blinks slowly, eyes clearing a little more as he observes Jeongin warily.

"Hi!" Jeongin blurts out, far too loud for the silence of the room.

The star-child flinches back - just a tiny bit, but enough for Jeongin to notice and wince internally. Yeah, okay, so that could have gone better.

"I'm Jeongin," he pushes on, letting a wide smile find its way into his cheeks and the corners of his eyes.

It takes a bit, but then the star-child opens his mouth and Jeongin honestly thinks he's hallucinating the depth of the rich, quiet voice that first replies "Felix," and then asks: "What is this place?"

Jeongin thinks about this for a bit. To be perfectly honest, _he_ doesn't really know what the Garden is, or the Alone, or where it is, or when it is. He doesn't know how he got here, either. He doesn't know how to begin to explain the gate or the paths or the shadow and ash and smoke, or the fallen stars or even the stardust that coats him like a second skin.

"It's the Alone," he finally settles on, "and this is my garden."

The star-child - _Felix_ \- nods once, eyebrows furrowing as he looks out into said garden, and then back at Jeongin. There's nothing afraid about the clear amber that meets Jeongin's own gaze; instead an exhaustion rivaling that of the stars that burn blackened ruby when Jeongin whispers to them, far out in the Alone.

"You should sleep," he says gently.

There's questions dancing behind Felix's eyes, begging to be raised. They're questions Jeongin knows he probably can't answer, so it's a small mercy when all Felix does is nod, and curl up on himself facing the garden window again.

Jeongin tugs a little at the moonflower clustered along the top of the doorway when he leaves; asks it to hang down as a curtain over the opening and the tops of all the windows, so that when Felix wakes up again the Alone won't be the first thing he sees.

He isn't just noticing it now, of course, but after spending so much time looking at Felix, whose eyes are amber and skin is alabaster pearl even when dim, Jeongin has never been quite so conscious of how _grey_ everything is.

___________________

Jeongin is tending to the aster by the gate (still stubbornly determined to smother the phlox growing next to it despite all Jeongin's coaxing) when there's a shift in the stardust under his knees.

He turns to see Felix, clutching the doorway tightly, feet buried in the stuff, looking out at the garden with something akin to awe. There's a small, quiet moment where Jeongin allows pride to swell in his chest for all the living, growing, glowing things that he's cherished for so many cycles.

Then Felix gestures around himself; out at the garden, at the iridescent pastels and deep jewel-tones painting petals and leaves with vibrant colour.

"What are they?"

Jeongin blinks.

A slow smile tugs his mouth into a grin. That answers _that_ question, at least.

"They're flowers," he says.

There's no smile in return - Jeongin has a feeling it might take a while before he sees one of those - but he knows he doesn't imagine the faint spark that flickers to life in warm amber eyes when Felix, after a moment of careful deliberation, whispers _flowers_ to himself as though it's the most precious thing to have ever crossed his lips.

___________________

The comet daisies are still grey.

Jeongin huffs and puffs and ponders and tries every type of stardust that he has - sapphire through ruby, gold and silver and opal and all the colours in between, and _none of it works._ The daisies stay bluntly grey, dulled as the smoke that drifts lazily beyond the dome.

Felix finds Jeongin crouched over them and sits next to him, tracing patterns through the thin layer of stardust coating the path. Contemplative silence follows, as Jeongin has learned always does with Felix. He allows himself to sit back too; rests on his ankles and lets out the breath it feels like he's been holding since he started trying to fix the daisies.

"What's wrong with them?" Felix asks quietly.

Jeongin stares at him, wondering if he's serious.

"I- they're _grey_ ," he says disbelievingly, holding out a handful of stardust from their base, where the shimmering pastel pink still lies in strange, trembling droplets.

Felix reaches out, picks up one of the spheres between two delicate fingertips, and holds it close to his face. Without warning, he presses down until it pops, smooth lines of his face twisting sharp in sudden, bitter realisation.

Jeongin stares at Felix's fingers, looks for the colour he _knows_ should be coating his skin, but it's not there. Instead, a small clump of ash drifts down and settles among the stardust.

He doesn't know quite what happens when Felix leans down and buries his hands deep in the iridescence at the base of the daisies. He whispers to them, but Jeongin doesn't understand the words his lips are forming; the sounds coming out of his mouth. All he knows is that they thrum gently, like the final grateful pulse of the stars he frees out in the Alone, and they echo deep in his bones.

When Felix looks up again, takes his hands out and brushes the loose stardust over the daisy petals, there's something wild in his eyes.

It's part smoke and part shadow, part violent ash, and it _burns_.

___________________

The comet daisies glimmer in the half-light of the Alone.

They're still grey, but not smoke-dull anymore. There's stardust sparkling in soft petals, and they reach up and out as if yearning for the shadows that brush against the garden wall.

Jeongin pulls Felix outside with him, questions breathlessly _how, how did you do that_ , turns to the star-child in gratitude- and finds himself struck still at the raw, pained amber fixed on the flowers. An abnormal calm descends in the silent space between breaths.

_Maybe they were always meant to be grey,_ Felix whispers, almost to himself, a half-smile flickering cold at the corners of his mouth.

Deep in Jeongin's chest, something aches.

___________________

At some point, Jeongin teaches Felix how to garden.

He shows him his flowers, teaches him their names, lets him scatter the stardust around the base and stems of their leaves and brush loose powder over the buds. He tells him about the Alone as they work; about the smoke and the shadows and the paths and fallen stars, and Jeongin's entire world shifts abruptly off-kilter when Felix starts talking to the stardust like Jeongin does to the flowers sometimes, when he loses himself in their company.

Felix talks to Jeongin as he does it, which makes it all the more disarming. He tells him about star-space; about day-cycles and night-cycles and about a star-dancer he met in the Earth system, called Minho. Jeongin wants to ask more, has so many questions about the galaxies he's only ever seen through the skylight, but a tight little lump forms in the back of his throat and constricts painfully every time he opens his mouth to do just that. He goes with it, and tells Felix about the lilacs instead.

Eventually, though, his desire to know overpowers the chokehold his common sense has on his tongue. Jeongin doesn't think he's ever regretted anything more.

"Have you found your fated?" he asks, and the silence that follows makes the tip of Jeongin's spine curl in on itself.

Felix goes very, very pale.

"Yes," he says, "I have."

He says nothing more for a very long time.

___________________

The space between them has been tense for too long.

Jeongin, hating himself more every bloom-cycle that passes, has realised that he doesn't know how to exist by himself anymore. He's in the moonflower room, on his back, looking up through the skylight to the vast expanse of star-space, when something moves in his periphery.

He lets his head fall to the side, glances out the garden window, and sees Felix.

Felix, under the cherry tree, dancing.

The stardust is singing, Jeongin registers with a jolt, and he's never heard it sing like this. There's always been a background hum, harmonies shifting subtly with the swell of shadow and smoke above and around Jeongin's garden, but this is a _song_.

It's a terrible, beautiful thing to watch. It feels as though every movement, every tightly controlled gesture is ripped straight from Felix's soul. Jeongin's breath catches in his chest as stardust flutters down from the cherry blossoms, lands in ash-grey hair and sets it gleaming like the comet daisies that now stand proud and reach tall towards shadow and smoke.

There's nothing joyful about it; nothing that makes Jeongin want to smile. It's heartbroken, devastated, and he thinks perhaps Felix thought he'd never be able to do it again, because there's stunned desperation saturating the fibres of of every living thing in Jeongin's garden, the type Jeongin has only ever known when his flowers have died and their colours have bled out to grey.

Jeongin is out the door before he realises he's sat up.

Felix freezes at the motion and Jeongin curses himself, again, for letting his stupid heart override his common sense and decency again, but he's never seen anyone in so much _pain_.

_I'm so sorry_ , he whispers as he pulls Felix close, wraps him up tight until all he can see and feel is alabaster and ash-grey.

Felix curls into him, small and cold and shaking, and his _it's okay_ splinters against Jeongin's pulse.

Jeongin knows that it isn't. But maybe, if he holds Felix tight enough, he can make it a little better.

___________________

They're past the midpoint of the ice-lily bloom, and Felix's hair is still ash-grey. His constellations are dim and darkening faster than ever, but his skin is warm to the touch. The flowers adore him, unfurl wide and bright and stretch up towards his hands as he scatters stardust over them.

The comet daisies haven't stopped blooming since Felix spoke to them, so Jeongin has turned to the butterfly daisies to tell him when it's time to step out the gate. They were opening cheerfully when he left, and Felix was sprawled out next to them, braiding fallen cherry blossoms into a crown.

Jeongin returns after a while, long enough that the moonflowers have come out, and his hands are a dizzying blend of colour. Felix is sat cross-legged in the middle of the violets, talking quietly to them. They settle under Felix's hands as he brushes fingertips gently over the soft petals.

"They like you, you know," Jeongin calls from the gate.

Felix startles, eyes wide as he presses his lips together tightly, cut-off mid-sentence with a quiet squeak. He looks like a fairy; soft hair fluttering as he turns quickly, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. A shy grin plants itself firmly on his face when he sees Jeongin.

The cherry blossom crown rests on Felix's head, and there's haphazard streaks of stardust on his cheeks from where he's tried to rub it off. Jeongin can only smile. It's painfully fond, and he knows he's probably revealing far more than he wants to, but at this point his heart is just useless, smitten goop in his chest.

___________________

Out in the Alone, three daisy-cycles later, Jeongin accidentally finds his way back to the place he found Felix.

He recognises the path before anything else; treacherously thin, and shadows thick where they lap at its crumbling edges.

There's a curious sphere lying in the empty space. When Jeongin crouches over it, he realises it's made of tightly clumped ash. It smells acrid, like flame-smoke, and a little like how Felix's dance might if it was a tangible object; bitter and hurt and desperate.

Jeongin, being a model of common sense, picks it up.

It's so cold it burns him at first, sharper than any flame, but as he holds it the sphere collapses inwards, crumbling into something else entirely- and all at once Jeongin's hands are filled with stardust. It's like nothing he's ever seen before; all silver and rose and peach and pearl, and it doesn't sing, it _dances._

The dark, hovering close around him, pulls back. A distinct ripple of _satisfied_ echoes through it when Jeongin turns, not even halfway done with his normal collection, and hurries down the path he knows will lead straight back to his garden.

___________________

The gate swings open to let him through. The moonflowers are out, and Felix is dozing under the cherry tree, his face pressed up against smooth, pale bark. Jeongin kneels carefully beside him, strange stardust on his fingers, and takes Felix's hands in his.

It spreads.

Little trails of starlight trace their way along his arms, across his chest, up his neck; settle in the dips and hollows of his face and flicker all the way down to his toes. They bleed outwards as if dissolving into his skin, until Felix glows brighter than anything Jeongin has ever seen.

Felix wakes to Jeongin's sharp inhale. He looks down at himself, and then straight back up at Jeongin, gaze utterly lost, and it's all Jeongin can do to lean forward and brush away the tears that gather with stardust-covered thumbs.

"You have flowers here," he whispers, and Felix does; miniature ice-lilies and cherry blossoms and comet daisies high on delicate cheekbones, tiny little violets in the corners of his eyes. They're breathtakingly pretty.

But even when the glow of his skin fades out and only the flowers are left shining, Jeongin thinks that he's never seen anything prettier than Felix's smile.

___________________

The sunflowers bloom as Felix does, when they sit touching shoulder through knee against the wall of the moonflower room. The Alone goes quiet, smoke paling and shadows retreating to the cracks in the paths. The garden is in full, vibrant colour.

Felix, raising a hand up to eye-level and pretending to cup one of the large golden flowers in his palm, is glowing.

There's a bright outline of aster curling up his wrist, from where Jeongin held it this morning to tug Felix outside to see the last of the poppies. On his shoulder blades, pink carnations. Everywhere Jeongin touches him, there are flowers.

He reaches out now, to brush Felix's hair out of his eyes; run a thumb over his forehead and watch a miniature rosebud unfurl just above his brow.

___________________

The softly gleaming bud is still there when Felix tells Jeongin about Chan, about Changbin; about his hair and his cheeks and the constellations that vanished when the flowers first blossomed on his skin.

Jeongin cries more than Felix does.

There's still something about the way Felix says their names, talks about the Earth-system that was his home for so many cycles, even now.

_I cant believe I'm here_ , he breathes.

_I can't believe you found me._

___________________

When the ice-lilies bloom, Jeongin kisses the ones that glow on Felix's cheeks.

___________________

Jeongin wonders, sometimes, what would have happened if he hadn't found Felix. If it was still just him and his flowers, in a garden somewhere in the sprawling shadows of the Alone.

He thinks about the comet daisies, about the grey room and the skylight, and the cherry tree and the violets, and the gate, and the smoke and ash and twisted pathways- and comes to the conclusion that he doesn't _want_ to think about before.

It's easy, instead, to think about the way Felix's eyes scrunch up when he smiles; how the violets at their corners crinkle and the lilies on his cheeks shine a little brighter in response. Easier still to close his eyes and see the garden growing on pale skin, the colours that splash bright across collarbones and cheeks and arms and wrists and slim hips from where Jeongin pulls Felix close as the moonflowers bloom.

There's little patches of stardust that gleam on Jeongin's skin in return; on his neck, where Felix brushes fingertips in greeting, on his forehead and the tip of his nose and the back of his hands and the sharp planes of his shoulders, and the one that shines just as bright as Felix glows, where his head rests over Jeongin's heart.

___________________

They lie in stardust under the cherry tree, pressed together shoulder to hip.

"Thank you," Felix whispers quietly, reaching across to lace their fingers together, and turns his face to nudge against the dip of Jeongin's shoulder.

"What for?"

Jeongin watches Felix breathe in, and then out. The lilies on his cheeks glow soft with starlight as he lifts his head with a smile.

"For giving me flowers."


End file.
